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User talk:Zephyrinus
Click here for the article on Pope Zephyrinus on the genealogy wikia. What follows relates to the User Zephyrinus. (Using an old pope's name as a user name takes no imagination.) Cemetery lists and categories See my "Contributions" for tonight's tidying - or just start at Category:Cemeteries and work your way down. And/or check Michigan. I've given Wikipedia (on the category talk pages) the links to two of your much better categories. Not looked for more, but you can tell me which ones get noticeably longer than Wikipedia's and I'll do the same promotion for them. (I'll archive selected bits of the Watercooler one day. When will you archive some of this page?!!!!!) Robin Patterson 15:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC) :I reviewed Category:Cemeteries. I suppose it doesn't make much sense to list every cemetery under "Cemeteries in the United States" either - that would also produce several thousand entries. :I'll pick up my mop and pail and review the categories for pages already created, after I get done laughing. You're comparing my talk page to the Watercooler's two year old messages?! Funny man. :-) ::Age is not the criterion for relevance, as we pensioners keep telling people!! Robin Patterson 12:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC) ::See User talk:Zephyrinus#Watercoolers. :I did cleanse my multiple link pages and I made a List of Icons. A good start? Zephyrinus 02:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC) ::Okay, I reviewed the Category situation. My summary is at Cemeteries. Can you look at that when you get the chance. I don't consider myself an expert on categories and would appreciate any feedback. I'll go through the various lists and try to make corrections. It will take some time - don't expect perfection tomorrow. Thanks! Zephyrinus 22:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC) :::It's late. I think I cleaned up my mess, the mess I created with the category situation. There are a few loose ends out there and I should review the categories to make sure everything is okay. Maybe the bucket and mop isn't completely over. Zephyrinus 02:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC) ::::Great work! See Template_talk:Category_redirect#I_don.27t_think_so. Robin Patterson 12:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Thanks Thanks for noticing! I am experimenting with formats. I used to have all my information at findagrave, but they went on an image purge and deleted almost 500 images from my entries. Where are you located? I also am backing up the biographies directly to Google at base.google.com. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 17:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC) :Did you get my answer? Zephyrinus 21:07, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Business I believe you are confusing me (in part) with someone else. I've been a sysop on this list for some time. I've no persnal need to delete the article you pointed to, and presume you picked up on something someone else said. As to the icon table, That was a start at the table you are now nicely building. I'm glad the skeleton was of some use to you. Bill 02:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC) Suggestion Zephyr, I appreciate your efforts at tidying up some left over ancient history. While many of these pages are infact unneeded, that is not always the case. This would be particularly true of very recent articles, but there are old versions whose titles need to be in place for various reasons. To that end it would be a good idea if you did not tidy up articles you haven't been involved with. I certainly prefer that you do not do that for my articles, or for any of the Wigton Walker articles. Thanks ---- Another trick Check out the tabs template here: Thomas (Lt.) Putnam (1615-1686) Template:Tabs is a really useful way to expand the infrastructure of the site. Chadlupkes 23:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC) ::The above helpful hint now copied to Forum:Tabs templates. Robin Patterson 13:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC) The alsoWP template I'm glad you like the short version. Easier to use than you realise, maybe: http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=List_of_New_Zealand_flags&diff=30625&oldid=30565 Robin Patterson 12:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC) Watercoolers You wanted some archiving done. See Genealogy:Watercooler. Now I hope you and others can use the forums for any discussions that might be of interest to other users, rather than using someone's talk page. Forum items can be categorised properly as an extra finding aid. You may have noticed I copied to a forum a conversation you and Chad had. Robin Patterson 14:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC) Kalamazoo I used to know the name "Kalamazoo" as a place connected with stationery - ring-lock binders? It was in the same semi-mythical class as Timbuktu. Now it's a multi-colour/color map of roads, exits, diamond interchanges (and at least one cloverleaf), RRs, airports, parks, lakes, creeks, rivers, townships (each with a township hall, a couple of which are a long way from the centre/center!), and a cluster of educational institutions all generally north-west of the middle of a city or village. Someone may have suspected that I have loved maps for the last 60+ years. I guess "B.C." in an airport name stands for "Battle Creek". With names like "Alamo" and "Fort Custer" one can expect some battles to have been in the area. See Bill's Indian Captivity stories! No "Mauris Ln". One of my friends lives in a secret exclusive street - or maybe across the county line! Purr. Robin Patterson 23:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC) Townships See http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:WMWillis#U.S._townships Robin Patterson 14:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC) Philosopy :Hi Zephyr ::Waxing philosphical, in response to your recent comment on my user page.... ::The Wikipedia (and by extension, the Wikia community) has a very well developed viewpoint on alternative points of view, and how differences of opinion should be handled. That's particularly important for genealogists simply because people often do have strongly divergent opinions about whose descended from whom. That can lead to acrimonious discussions. So, even though this list, because of its nature, does not embrace ALL of the Wikipedia viewpoint (e.g., we obviously accept and encourage original research), I believe key features of the underlying philosophy (e.g., relating to conflict resolution), should be emulated. Keeping the viewpoint objective is a key part of that philosophy. Its always better to discuss facts, rather than to debate opinion. ::And on another note, I'm glad you're back with us. I'm looking forward to seeing your future contributions. At some point I supsect you will run out of cemeteries where you have collected stone data. When that happens you might want to consider looking at some of the published cemetery lists where the source material is out of copyright. Transcription and presentation of such lists should be enough to allow you to continue your cemetery project more or less indefinitely, if that's what you would like to do. WPA Tombstone transcription project would be a good place to start, since those records are federal government, and therefore public property. Bill 12:58, 27 May 2007 (UTC) Anonymous users Please look carefully at http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=User_talk:63.125.4.210&action=history and the page it refers to. You should be pleased. I obviously was. Robin Patterson 14:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC) Speedy deletion Zeph, your use of the "delete" template seems to be flawless. And convincing. Just so that a few others can admire your work I'll leave the page undeleted until you ask me to delete it. Robin Patterson 05:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC) :I believe what Zephyr has stumbled on is a bug in the WikiMedia---when I did my test of the template, initially it looked like nothing had happened. It was only after coming back to the page later that it looked like the action had been accomplished. Either a) its a "refresh problem", or b) there's a delay in the operaiton of the template. Perhaps its a periodic bot that runs every ten minutes or so. Bill 12:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC) :::Ironically, the problem is: Now that I've used John Richard (1855-1894) as an example in the forums, perhaps we ''shouldn't delete it so that the kids will always know what we were talking about. Sigh. Zephyrinus 22:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC) ::::There were reasons for originally marking John Richard (1855-1894) page for deletion, but not actually deleting it. There is a distinction to be made between choosing to do something, and refusing to do something. Sometimes, doing nothing is the most appropriate choice. I interpreted Zephyr's comment about "refusing" as simply poor word choice. No offense was taken. ::::When I marked this article for deletion, it was with the realization that that would probably not occur unless I choose to delete it. Deleteing articles was simply something we were not particularly bothering with. Those circumstances have now changed, so in the interest of creating an end to the discussion, I've restored the article to an earlier version, corrected somethings, but not all, and in the process taken it off the deletion list (I hope). I'm hoping the author will eventually get back and make the additional corrections needed. So, in the meantime, don't delete it, please. Eventually this may happen, but I'm waiting for author input. Things do move slowly sometimes on the wiki. Problems not fixed today can still be fixed tomorrow. And problems not fixed tomorrow, can still be fixed in the fullness of time. Bill 23:20, 4 June 2007 (UTC) Spam Congratulations and good work! When you roll something back, the material that is being elided remains in the article's archival history. If the material was egregiously offensive it can be removed even from there, but it's usually not worth the effort. Usually this kind of item is a "one-off" thing, and the spammer is unlikely to return---especially when the item is caught within minutes of posting. Bill 20:20, 9 June 2007 (UTC) Logo Logo's are tucked away where they won't be easily accessible; I suspect that the logo is something of a spam magnet, so they don't make it too easy to change. Your suggestion might be a good idea. However, there are usually good reasons for why things are as they are. So what I'd suggest doing is creating a version of the logo with your changes, based on the image that appears on the main page on the top box, right hand corner. Don't kill the current version, as we might want to revert to it. You can find that particular image by clicking on it in the usual way. This won't change the logo itself, but we can see how it might look with your changes under different circumstances. If it seems good, then we can fiddle with the logo itself. Bill 12:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC) Saw your work with this in the sandbox. After seeing the results, you may also see what the problem is. I confess, that I didn't really think about making the white areas transparent, but I did think about giving them color---and couldn't come up with a solution that wouldn't look odd. Short of tailoring the image to each and every circumstance that it appears in, I don't know how this can be made to look right, other than using the white background. However, since the background of the logo proper (the one with the "G") could be set to transparent without a problem, since the background is already white anyway. Don't know what use that would be, but it probably wouldn't create a problem. Bill 11:44, 12 June 2007 (UTC) I can't really type much right now - but I wasn't talking about "making the white areas transparent" but about making the background transparent; this would make the background appear white on white, or green on green, or blue on blue - what is making me nuts (besides life in general) is that the logo on my screen is appears with a background of a light shade of blue on a browser screen which is otherwise white (like the same colour as a grey-out scroll bar on the left-hand side of my screen) - I think this is unsightly; but maybe that's Opera again, I don't know. Cheers, Zeph Since the background is in fact "white" (as opposed to haveing no color) what you are proposing to do is make the white areas transparent. I thought, after seeing your experimentation with that in the sandbox that the reason that doesn't work would be obvious, but perhaps not. The reason this doesn't work is because the logo uses a complete rainbow of colors. If you change the background to transparent, the logo will appear to float above whatever color your browser is using for a background. Inevitably, that would merge some of the detail of the logo with the defacto background, making the image appear odd in places, and certainly not very aesthetic looking. Bill 15:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC) Flag templates Zeph, my dear penfriend, I have come across a small clash of interests. Your delectable flagwaving templates are in some cases given the same names as Wikipedia templates that do far more (eg lists of cities, counties, and whatnots - well, almost). The problem ones are those that have just the whole name of a country or U.S. state. No problem (so far) with the old-style abbreviation ones such as Template:Tenn: just the whole-name ones, such as Template:California (which at this moment has five pages linking to it). I want to copy - and use in many places straight from Wikipedia without retyping - the state and country ones. See Wikipedia:Template:California for example. Would you be offended if I changed yours to something that doesn't clash? (How can I find out how much work that would be?!) Wikipedia has related templates that I expect to find useful. You may too. Wikipedia:Template:Flag, Wikipedia:Template:Flagcountry, and Wikipedia:Template:Flagicon. Please: #Don't create another full-name flag template in case we want to save heaps of time using the Wikipedia one of the same name #Look at Wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Flag Template (if you've already read it, please reread). #Some time have a look at Wikipedia:Template:Flagicon etc and see if you think either of us could save time with them. Robin Patterson 13:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC) :No, I guess I wouldn't take offence, but requiring me to read a Wikipedia project is another obstacle to entry for me, I have other things pressing on my time recently; but I was here first (as far as templates go). :I guess I would ask that you ask yourself, since I trust your judgment I trust you can question your own actions and give yourself pause and a moment to think: What problem are you trying to solve? Does it exist or are you sure it will exist? Not everything that has arisen on Wikipedia need necessarily be repeated here. If that were the case, the Wikia Founders would have just copied Wikipedia on a certain date, but erased all the content; they didn't do that; they started with a blank slate. I'm not sure we should, or need to, copy everything from Wikipedia either. :I'm not saying you're not doing good. (I don't know, I haven't been around in a while. Otherwise engaged. But when I left you were busy copying templates.) Anyway, I can't make that point now. Gotta run. See yah. Zeph